Silence of a Heartbeat
by Loosely Divided
Summary: AU post Reichenbach 2x03/2.03. Sherlock finally returns to London two years later. Everyone is an enemy with a motive, and dreams go up in smoke. It's dark, you have been warned, and welcome to the rollercoaster. But hush. Quietly now, we are but bystanders, it would do only harm to interfere.
1. Prologue?

A man stands in the dark dank tunnel, frame shrouded by a long overcoat that swishes around his knees. The man stands lightly, alert, on the balls of his feet, catlike and sinister. A predator.

He holds a freshly bloodied knife and swings it around aimlessly, crimson drops catching the dim light as they fling themselves through the air. The empty shell of a lonely homeless man lies crumpled in the corner. What a shame. The body will be found, in several days, making headlines at first and then disappearing off the newspapers just as quickly, as the police find dead ends in every direction and quickly give up search.

They'll give up searching because no one cares. Just another homeless person dead. Oh well.

Not that he had to die. It's just that the man, standing in his coat mysteriously, doesn't like bystanders. And he already knows the police won't look too hard for any clues. Two years ago? Perhaps, but now London is overruled by an anonymous shadow of terror, a stain that cannot be removed, no matter how hard the government has tried. Is trying.

The man bares his teeth with a feral grin, whites glinting. He leans back against the damp stone walls, and waits for his visitor. He has been waiting for several days almost fully on end, his servants providing for his needs. He waits, and waits some more, but he can _feel_ it, his visitor is coming today. So he settles back against the wall patiently.

A man like him? He can wait for ever if need be.

2.083 years. 25 months. 762 days. 18, 288 hours.

It's been a long time, and Sherlock Holmes has changed.

But so has he.

**A/N: sooooo...I am really excited for this story. Who is the man? What are his sinister motives? Pls review, I can only improve with feedback. And for those who have read my other story and notice a difference in writing style, it is because that story was written at 3am :P**

**I shall update soon?**


	2. Oh the Woes of Grief and Denial

**So I will try to update roughly every week or so, it may be more, it may be less.**

**Disclaimer: Not my playground, however much I wish it was.**

**I've decided the format for this story is quite sequential, this chapter and the previous were to fill-in the background, the next chapter will contain dialogue. at the beginning of each chapter there will be a small section in Italics, it, over the course of the chapters, will record an event that happened three months post Sherlock's jump. As well some chapters may contain a phrase in all bold italics, that will play a part later as well.**

**UnBeta'd, any and all mistakes are mine.**

**I want to thank RavensGame for being a writing inspiration to me, your work is amazing.**

**Enjoy :)**

_He moans from where he lies on the battered couch. Sherlock's skull friend stares at him. The 221B flat spins, its colours blending into a dizzying kaleidescope. He faintly smells the stench coming from the trash can by his side. The skull's sockets stare back at him accusingly._

_Whatever. Sherlock has been dead, gone, erased for three and a half months now, and John Watson is too drunk to care about anything right now._

"My best friend, Sherlock Holmes, is dead." The words push through his raw throat, force past his dry tongue to release into the charged air, speaking of over-whelming grief and despair.

The case had started out excitingly enough, Moriarty was back and there was work to do. But suddenly there were Richard Brooks and screaming little girls and fingers pointed blamingly - and wrongly - and then he was kneeling on the pavement and Sherlock was just _lying_ there all crooked and broken like a child's least favourite doll, with all that blood and he couldn't find a pulse no he couldn't he had tried he really had -

- but he hadn't found a pulse. He couldn't find the pulse and Sherlock Holmes was dead. He couldn't find the pulse and Sherlock had jumped off and fallen through the air and splat and _he hadn't found the pulse._

Grief was always after the denial. Oh, the denial was the easiest, leaving teacups places where Sherlock would leave them, talking to the skull or simply staring at it the way Sherlock would sometimes on cozy evenings, ordering tables for two because Sherlock would be there, just you watch, no the great Sherlock Holmes couldn't be dead. He was too good for that. Wasn't he?

But then the grief had settled in as the apartment had remained quiet and undisturbed, and there was no Lestrade running up the stairs because of a new case or a Mycroft dropping by or people seeking help from the world's only consulting detective duo. There was nothing left except for an empty armchair and a dead skull and a quiet Ms. Hudson creeping quietly through the hallways. Nothing left except an empty bed and an unused couch and the silence that fills a space when the constant musings of a genius cease to tumble through the air.

So he had moved away, without a second glance and drowned his feelings in liquor elsewhere. When Sherlock came back, he wouldn't want to see alcohol-induced vomit stains on the carpet, right?

When Sherlock came back he'd be proud of him, yes, Sherlock would be proud of John Watson. Because he had kept it together, he really had, drinking elsewhere and crying elsewhere and vandalizing furniture elsewhere.

He had kept the flat safe, and perhaps that was the only thing he had left of Sherlock Holmes, a thread that connected him to the once-genius now rotting-corpse.

Two geniuses, of good and evil, going down together in the ultimate showdown. It was mastermind vs. mastermind but the game had defaulted and now everyone was dead. How poetic.

But perhaps time did heal wounds, albeit slowly, because a year later the grief was still coursing through his veins, but more with the sensation of a dull whiskey than of a sharp and bubbly champagne.

And he had stood at the gravestone and begged his friend to return. And at the corner of his eye he could have sworn he saw a long black overcoat that practically had _Sherlock_ written all over it.

Tracking Mycroft had been easy after that. A knife was a good persuasion tactic when the wielder had abandoned most sanity.

The words had bubbled forth from Mycroft's mouth - albeit painfully - and John knew it he had been right and maybe Christmas _had_ come this year.

"Sherlock is alive," and those were the only words he had ever really needed to hear for the past year.

And that meant that he hadn't failed. John Watson might have failed to find the pulse, but it had still been there, the heart had still been beating and that was all that had mattered.

.

But Sherlock never came home. And dammit all, because Sherlock had been alive for a whole year and never once even sent a fucking_ postcard_, no "hey by the way I'm alive."

He had tried tracking him down, but as he learned the hard way, no one finds Sherlock Holmes unless Sherlock Holmes wants them to.

.

**_Here we are viewing a man pushed too far to the brink. His best friend is alive but not returning, and that is just too much to handle. The man's sanity snaps, his humanity drowns, and the world crumbles to ashes amid the flames._**

.

It had started in an alleyway, one year and two months later. One small knife, one annoying drunken man spouting leering insults at all who come near, one over-powering calm, removed sense of feeling, one bloody body on the cold cobblestone ground, one Dr. Watson standing over the body, feeling absolutely nothing for the crumpled figure on the ground.

But then again John didn't believe that the man was dead. He was simply faking it like Sherlock Holmes did, and the man was about to spring up, alive and _back_, and if any man on the street could do it then Sherlock Holmes certainly could. Would. Had. Hadn't he?

The problem was that the man hadn't woken up. He had "died," John had checked for the lack of pulse, but the man hadn't woken up, hadn't been up and moving and breathing and living like Sherlock still was.

Why wasn't the man waking up?

Perhaps the man needed to fall off a building roof, not be stabbed to wake up again. But that couldn't be right. Dead was dead, was it not?

Why wasn't he waking up?

John Watson let out a frustrated sigh. He would simply have to keep on trying until one of them woke up. He didn't understand /why/ the man wasn't waking up though. Step 1, they die. Step 2, no pulse. Step 3, up they pop.

A moment of clarity worms its way to John's brain. He takes in, /really/ takes in his surroundings. He's standing with a bloody knife and a body on the ground in a dark cold alleyway in London. What?

The moment of sanity passes. John grins, his features softly illuminated by the pale light of a far off street lamp.

Oh, the games Sherlock Holmes plays.

.

They never woke up, not a single one. He didn't even know how many 'they' were, he had lost count after 50. But the fact that they never awoke was okay in the end, they were still going to a better place then the craphole every human was subject to, this filthy stinking Earth. He was helping them, no? He was a doctor after all, he knew best. But then a year later he had gotten a note warning him that he would be found and punished (he did not understand quite what for, he was simply helping people. That's what doctors did).

It was signed _SH_, and he had not a shred of doubt that his friend was the one behind the pen and square of paper.

However it had happened, Sherlock Holmes was coming home, and that was all that mattered. And Sherlock would be _so_ proud of him, because he had been smart, just like Sherlock. He had informants from every walk of life and people begging for his help, and in his own way he was just as great as Sherlock.

It was all he had ever wanted, to be associated with Sherlock was all he ever wished for. Him and Sherlock, side by side.

Perhaps dreams come true after all, even if they experience two-year shipping delays.

**Hey y'all! pls pls PLS review if you have the time, I am always looking for feedback and ways to improve.**


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